


Lives Lost

by Luki



Category: Dr. STONE (Anime), Dr. STONE (Manga)
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, In which I'm awful to Yuzuriha, OC death, and hurt Gen for good measure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22091398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luki/pseuds/Luki
Summary: When Yuzuriha receives devastating news, Senku is forced to face an inevitable fact.His goal of saving everyone is ultimately impossible.
Relationships: Asagiri Gen & Ishigami Senkuu, Ishigami Senkuu & Ogawa Yuzuriha & Ooki Taiju
Comments: 15
Kudos: 177
Collections: All-Time Favorites, The Great Reads





	Lives Lost

**Author's Note:**

> This actually started with me trying to calculate how many people's statues would have been destroyed over several thousand years - I've watched Life After People far too many times - and then I decided to traumatise our best girl, and the two ideas fused together.
> 
> Set post Stone Wars, so possibly minor spoilers here and there.

“Are you sure this is right, Minami?” Yuzuriha asks.

The report scoffs as she walks through the forest, patting a petrified head along the way. “Yuzuriha, I have been locating petrified statues throughout Tokyo for the better part of a year. It might not looking anything like the streets of before, but I practically know this place like the back of my hand by now.”

Yuzuriha laughs, and starts wandering through the undergrowth, Taiju ploughing ahead.

“Sorry, I’m just nervous. It’s been so long, and I used to spend time looking for broken statues, but I could never quite figure out where my old neighbourhood used to be.”

“That was probably for the best,” Nikki says, jostling her shoulder with a grin. “You’d have been terrified Tsukasa might have found them.”

Yuzuriha blushes, but all three woman look up when they hear Taiju yell.

“Yuzuriha! I just found your neighbour!” he hollers, grin on his face. “They must be around here!”

The girl’s face lights up, and she runs to her friends side. Nikki chuckles, walking next to Minami as they follow at a more sedate pace.

“Should we be upset that Senku is showing favouritism?” she asks. “Nobody else gets to hunt down the statues of their parents and drag them to the safety of the village.”

“Oh come on, its Yuzuriha,” Minami says. “Between that trio, she’s the only one who has anyone to find. Now, if they were actually reviving them, we might have some protests, but are you really going to argue about a little legwork for our little seamstress?”

Nikki grins, and goes to join Taiju, digging through the dirt and trying to locate any buried figure. To be honest, she really doesn’t mind at all. Yuzuriha works flat out to help with Senku’s vision, and even when she was technically a double agent, she’d made a point to make an outfit that was suited to the individual, rather than just random rags. In a primitive world, it had been a genuine kindness, and keeping a smile her face seems like a great way to pay it back.

“My parents would have both been home when it hit,” Yuzuriha had explained. “I know we can’t revive them yet, but I’d feel so much better if I at least had them somewhere safe.”

Senku had been happy to let her go, and while he’d been too busy to go himself, Taiju had sworn to help her find them, and Nikki volunteered her own services. Minami had come to make sure they could locate the area quickly, and here they were.

“Yuzu! I’ve found a hand!” Taiju yells, and Nikki runs over, grabbing the shovel and digging into the dirt.

“It’s pretty big, it might be my Dad,” Yuzuriha says, practically giddy with excitement. Nikki and Taiju make short work of the mud, but their smiles fade when the arm comes loose, the erosion below the elbow clear as day.

The happy mood vanishes, and the group finish the excavation in silence.

* * *

When Yuzuriha and the others return to the village, Senku goes pale when he finds them empty handed. He locks eyes with Yuzuriha, only for the girls face to fall and turn away, running towards her own tent. Taiju quickly gives chase, looking as lost as she does. Senku watches them vanish, before pinning Nikki down with a look.

“What happened?”

Nikki shares a look with Minami, and then sags.

“We found Yuzuriha’s parents,” she explains. “But, they’d been damaged at some point. Her father’s arm was snapped off, and whatever did it also took out his shoulder and some of his chest. Her mother was in better shape, but something cracked the back of her skull, and the erosion was just too much.”

The girl shakes her head.

“They’ve been beyond revival for a long time...”

* * *

Yuzuriha’s sobs can be heard before Senku even makes it to her tent. He stands in the entrance, looking at the girl huddled in the corner, Taiju leaning nearby, hands reached out, but looking scared to touch her.

“M-Maybe it’s not so bad,” Taiju splutters, desperate for a crumb of hope. “We can talk to Senku. If we get the glue, and give them some work-”

“My father’s chest is _gone_ , Taiju,” Yuzuriha stays, bitterness mixed with tears as she crouches low to the ground, hugging her knees. “And my mother is missing half her head. No amount of glue is going to fix that.”

Taiju’s face falls, and slowly, delicately, he crouches next to the girl, one arm gingerly wrapping round her shoulders. She flinches when his hand settles, and he almost takes it back – only for Yuzuriha to burst into tears, throwing her arms around his and sobbing into his chest.

“Why?” she yells, tears staining his tunic. “Of all the people I’ve managed to save. After all the people Senku had me glue together, why can’t I save them? Why can’t I save just one of them? What did I do, that I had to lose them both?”

Taiju can only hold the girl tight, looking up at Senku in despair. The scientist is pale, clenching the tent fabric for dear life.

“You didn’t do anything, Yuzu,” Taiju says, dropping his head closer to the girls. “It was just, an accident. There was nothing anyone could do.”

Senku sucks in a breath, and pries his hand loose from the entrance.

“Nikki told me what they looked like,” he says, voice hollow. “With the rate of decay, and where you found them, they’d been broken centuries ago. Nothing could have been done to help them.”

Yuzuriha just keeps crying.

“They must have been so scared,” she cries. “To be trapped in the stone. And they never got to wake up. They never got to be saved.”

Then her eyes widen, and she goes through another wave of grief.

“Oh God, what if they’re still conscious?” she says. “If they can’t feel anything, what if their minds are still working, waiting for someone to revive them, only nobody can.”

“That’s a worse case scenario,” Senku insists from his spot at the doorway. “And think about it, when I used the revival fluid on the broken pieces, I just got dead body parts. If they were still alive, there would have been the facsimile of life. A heartbeat, blood flow, as the body returned to the state it was in before petrification and began dying. The fact that they revive dead means that an eroded statue is already dead.

Taiju hugs her closer.

“See, Yuzu, they didn’t feel anything,” he tries to offer. “It was a painless death.”

The girl shakes her head.

“How can we be sure?” she says. “People are still alive when they’re stone, Taiju.”

The boy falters, and looks up to Senku in desperation, and he steps forward.

“Once someone loses consciousness from petrification, they’re not aware of anything Yuzuriha,” he tells her. “Even when someone stays conscious, they don’t don’t feel anything.”

“But how do we know that for sure?” Yuzuriha asks, head lifting and looking at him in tragic terror. “You can’t know that Senku! We can’t revive eroded statues. For all we know, they wake up when the erosion starts, and feel every second of it until it’s fatal. There’s no way to prove otherwise.”

Senku opens his mouth to refute it, then closes it. His eyes dim, and he shuffles over to Taiju’s side, sitting down, and placing a hand on Yuzuriha’s shoulder.

“You’re right, I can’t know that,” he admits. “But the evidence is in my favour. Everything leads to the petrification being some kind of tool for healing. For it to have that kind of effect goes against what we know.”

Yuzuriha sucks in a breath. “You promise? You’re not just saying that?”

“I won’t say it’s impossible,” Senku admits. “But I’d stake my own life on it, ten billion percent.”

* * *

Senku cancels every single project he was supposed to be working on that day to stay by Yuzuriha’s side. Chrome and the others don’t even question it, only offering condolences and doing whatever they could without Senku’s input. That night, when his friend has cried herself to sleep, Taiju’s arms still wrapped around her, Senku slips away, heading for his observatory. He runs through his routine almost subconsciously, and resets things twice before realising he’s already looking at the star he wanted.

Dammit, he needs to pull himself together.

“How is she doing?”

Senku huffs, and turns his head. He’s not surprised to see Gen stepping through the doorway.

“As well as anyone can expect. I don’t think the possibility that they’d be eroded occurred to her till she found them. It hit her hard.”

Gen nods. “Well, our little Kingdom has been batting out victory after victory. Ailure-fay isn’t something they think about much now.”

Senku sighs.

“Yeah. That’s my fault. I should have prepared her. At least put the idea in her head. Instead she walked in blind.”

Gen nods, walking over to his side.

“I wouldn’t place too much blame on yourself,” Gen assures him. “Of all the depetrified, Yuzuriha is the one who understands erosion best. How many statues did she find while collecting Tsukasa’s victims, damaged long before he got near them. She might not have wanted to admit it, but deep down, she knew there was a risk. The trauma unfortunately, was inevitable regardless of how prepped she was.”

Senku growls, hand rubbing at his eyes.

“Still, it’s the first time we ran into someone we know who won’t make it,” he says. “I liked Yuzuriha’s parents. They were good people.”

Gen doesn’t answer, turning to look at the telescope, and runs a hand over the tube. Senku half wonders if he’s trying to distract himself.

“I heard some of the conversation,” Gen admits. “She did bring up some rather awful ideas, you did well in relieving her.”

Senku doesn’t reply, and Gen turns his head back.

“Was it a lie?”

Senku leans back from the telescope, and sighs.

“If it was meant for healing, why wasn’t it deactivated?” Senku asks. “Or rather, why hit the entire planet at once? The death toll from that alone would have been in the millions. Whoever or whatever did this didn’t care about protecting life.”

“So Yuzuriha could be right?”

“There’s no point in her suffering over a worst case scenario, that most likely isn’t true,” Senku insists. “It’s bad enough that she lost her parents, the last thing she needs is the idea that they died slowly and painfully. What we know for certain is going to be hard enough to recover from.”

His face warps into a bitter smile.

“You know, it hit me when I realised Byakaya had died thousands of years ago,” he starts. “But this – we’re not going save everyone. It’s too late. The number of people that just got taken out by mother nature and time...it’s nauseating.”

“She won’t be the only one to lose someone,” Gen reminds him, settling down next to Senku. “You of all people should know that.”

Senku’s smile turns bitter.

“At least the old man lived a full life,” he says. “I’ll never see him again, but he died happy, and with family around him. That’s something Yuzuriha doesn’t get. That a lot of people aren’t going to get. For all we know, everyone currently depetrified has lost their family. Maybe even yours.”

Gen blinks, and to stare up at the sky.

“My parents were flying when the petrification happened.”

Senku stills, and glances over. Gen keeps looking at the stars, and Senku drops his head.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Gen’s lips twitch. “It didn’t quite register it at first. It actually hit me while I was trying to find the Village. I was grateful for the solitude, I didn’t have to hide my reaction. To be honest, my worst fear was that I would be the one who had to break it to my brother.”

Senku doesn’t hide the surprise.

“I didn’t know you had a brother.”

Gen smiles and dips his head. “Yes, well, we weren’t always close. He was older than me, a medical student, studying to become a surgeon. And my parents were both in the medical profession.”

His smile becomes humorous.

“I’m sure you can imagine, I was the black sheep of the family, _‘_ _squandering my natural talent and selling out to the cheap media.’_ ”

He flicks out his hand in a practised move, and Senku smirks. “Direct quote?”

“However did you tell? But it was all in good fun, they supported me all the way.”

He huffs, and leans back.

“After I was revived, and agreed to work with you, I tried to talk Tsukasa into reviving him,” he explained. “He was technically young, and we could use someone who understood disease. Ideally, I wanted to bring him here to help with dear Ruri’s drug. I think I was probably more surprised than anyone when Tsukasa agreed.”

Senku grows tense. Because there isn’t a doctor among their number. Gen turns and looks him straight in the eye.

“I managed to find him, where his dorm would have been.”

His eyes dim.

“Or, at least, _most_ of him. I don’t know if it was the building collapsing, or an earthquake, or just bad luck, but he was in pieces. I only found enough to recognise him.”

Senku swallows.

“I’m sorry,” he offers, again. As if that word has ever been enough.

Gen turns to look outside again.

“I think that’s the day I realised,” he finishes. “Just how much was lost. It’s not just science and history and media, it’s people too. Even if you succeed in bringing civilisation back to where it was technologically, and revive everyone that can be revived, the world will never be the same. For the first time in all history, humanity will grieve as one.”

Senku’s next breath is shaky, and he rubs the back of his neck.

“It’s going to take so _long_ ,” he hisses. “And this story is going to keep repeating and repeating. Even when everything’s close to what we had, people will be missing for centuries. We’ll never truly know if we manage to find everyone, or what happened to the ones we don’t. Without seeing other countries, for all I know this was a mass extinction level event for humanity.”

By his side, the Mentalist frowns.

“Surely you’ve always know that?”

“In the back of my head, sure,” Senku mutters. “But with this, I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s in my head on loop. I can’t shut it off. Everything that probably happened while we were petrified. How many died while I was counting seconds.”

Gen hums to himself, then falls back against the floor.

“Okay then,” he says. “Lets go through it. Worst case scenario.”

Senku frowns.

“Excuse me?”

The Mentalist grins. “You heard me. Worst case scenario. If everything that could possibly have gone wrong, went wrong, in the worst ossible-pay way, what are we looking at?”

“Is this supposed to help?” Senku snaps, and Gen shrugs.

“Humour me.”

Senku sighs, glancing at his telescope.

And at that no-longer-North-star.

“Well, for starters, 3700 years really shouldn’t have been enough time to shift the North star,” he says. “In astronomy terms, that’s not really anything at all. It would take a tremendous force, most likely a meteor strike, or a super-volcano erupting.”

“A volcano can shift the earth’s axis?”

“You asked for worse case scenario,” Senku sniped. “It’s highly unlikely, but yeah, it’s not impossible. If Yellowstone erupted, and all the worst odds all lined up, it could, theoretically, pull it off.”

Senku then sags. “But if it did, just about everything in about twenty kilometres would have been vaporised, and that’s minimum. Most of the USA, and therefore any statue, would be trapped under several feet of ash, which with rain could possibly get heavy enough to shatter them. The death toll in America would be...”

He huffs and stops. “Or, we could have had a meteor. Something big, that scientists would normally track and keep an eye on. Depending on where it landed, we could have a crater to rival what took out the dinosaurs. Given that we still have animals, that’s unlikely, but a decent sized one could still take out most of a city. If it was in the countryside, minor damage, but if it hit somewhere like New York or London or Rome...million lost, easy.”

Then Senku laughs. “Or hey, maybe both happened. Worst case, right?”

“Right,” Gen says.

“Either would also cause a second ice age, which adds the risk of ice and snow damages. Then, we’ve got natural disasters,” Senku continues. “Certain parts of the world would be generally safe, since we don’t have to worry about keeping the land survivable, but anywhere that suffers earthquakes or tornadoes or hurricanes – their populations have probably been wiped out. We’ve also got wildfires. I never tested the petrified rock shards with heat, but depending on how much they can handle, statues could have shattered from that. And speaking of heat, anyone who lived near Mt. Fuji when it erupted, melted by lava or caught when the ground shifted. All gone. Same with Hawaii, Italy, New Zealand, and anywhere else with regular volcanic activity.”

“Is that everything?” Gen asks, and Senku gives a mirthless chuckle.

“Not even close. Next up, we move onto the man made disasters. A lot of cities on the water are built on reclaimed land. Tokyo, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Venice, good chunk of America’s East Coast. Left to rot and decay, those places flooded and sank back into the oceans, taking their statues with them. Depending on how long it took, even if those statues are still in one piece, they’re stuck under so much mud and debris, it could take centuries to get them all out.”

Senku keeps going. Anyone on an oil rig, or in a mine or a nuclear power station has sunk, been crushed, or vaporised/too radioactive for anyone to touch. Anyone travelling on transport is dead – cars, planes, boats, trains – with no one to stop them or get them to a safe haven, everything crashed or sank. There are probably thousands of statues in the ocean, who shattered from the pressure after currents pulled them deep. Anyone who was in a high rise building was pounded into dust when they collapsed. Plant life – especially crawling plants like kudzu, probably ripped statues to pieces, or again, pounded them into the ground where it’s going to be a nightmare to get them. Oh, and how about people climbing Everest? Or anyone else who was rock climbing or sky jumping or scuba diving or doing basically anything that would shatter a statue doing it?

By the time he’s done, even Senku’s starting to feel depressed. Gen however, just stares at him with a smile.

“Final toll?”

“...maybe 2 billion or so survivors,” Senku says. “With some countries completely wiped out, and the extinction of several smaller ethnicities.”

Gen nods.

“Okay. And now, best case scenario.”

Senku blinks.

“Best case scenario.”

“You said that was the worst of the worst, if everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Now flip it on it’s side, what if things went wonderfully ight-ray?”

Senku frowns.

“That works on the assumption that whoever did this wanted to keep us safe,” he says. “Which is a ten billion percent impossible hypothesis. But if mother nature ended up working in our favour...”

He bites his lip and works out the statistics.

“No super-volcano, just a meteor, and it hit somewhere completely isolated,” he starts, trying to run the statistics in his head. “Casualties would be minimal. And considering how many statues are still in one piece in Tokyo, it looks like the statues might be hardy enough to make it through the majority of earthquakes, floods and natural disasters. Debris from collapsed buildings might actually act as a shield, reduce the breaking total. Yuzuriha also survived clinging to a tree, so it’s possible that plant life doesn’t break statues so much as protect them once they’re bound in enough. Looking at minimal casualties, we could end up reviving up to 5 billion, though that’s calculating for a decreased number of natural disasters once human technology and global warming repair came into effect.”

Gen grins.

“How likely is either of these scenarios?”

Senku stops, looks over at the Mentalist, and then lies down next to him.

“Both are plausible,” he admits. “Worst case has a lot of valid points, but best case is built on evidence we already have. The petrification seems to vary in strength – some people stay in one piece without issue, but other’s lose limbs from just falling over. There’s no way to accurately tell a casualty rate at this point. Not by just looking at our current group. We need to confirm examples in other countries.”

“So, taking that into account, best and worst, what is the most likely survival rate when we succeed?”

Senku mulls it over.

“It’ll take decades,” he confirms again. “There will be so many statues in places we can’t easily get to. Or buried under years of dirt or trapped underwater. We definitely won’t finish it in our lifetime.”

He sighs and stares up at the stars.

“But...3-4.5 billion,” he surmises. “Close or over half the population, thereabouts.”

Gen smiles.

“3-4 billion,” he repeats. “I think that’s a pretty good number to hope for, as a final goal. After all, there’s not much point in worrying over a worst case scenario that most likely didn’t happen, right?”

Senku’s eyes widen, and he starts to chuckle. Gen’s smile widens as it turns into a full blown laugh.

“You know estimates are just that, right?” Senku says, once he’s recovered.

“And until we know more, it’s a good goal to aim for,” Gen argues. Senku smiles, and then gives a soft chuckle.

“You know, it took us 200,000 years to make it to 1 billion,” he says. “And only 200 to make it to over seven. I wonder how long it’ll take us to get there this time?”

“Oh, with proper motivation, I don’t think it’ll be long at all,” Gen chimes, and Senku lets himself grin, before turning over with a serious expression.

“You should tell Yuzuriha,” Senku says. “About your family. She could use someone who understands. And I get the feeling you haven’t let yourself properly mourn yet.”

Gen’s smile is tight as he stares at him.

“You’re hardly one to talk, Senku-chan.”

“Not the same,” he argues.

“Grief is grief, Senku.”

He sighs, and turns his head upwards and out at the stars again. Gen keeps his eyes on Senku.

“If you can give Yuzuriha time to grieve, and process what she’s lost, why can’t you give yourself the same? If everyone is inevitably going to experience this pain, maybe it’s time to start preparing for it now.”

Senku looks torn, but after a few moments, his eyes harden.

“You talk to Yuzuriha first thing tomorrow,” Senku says. “She gets top priority. After that, I’ll consider it.”

Gen smiles. “That’s all I ask.”

* * *

A few days later, they have a funeral for Yuzuriha’s parents. Kaseki makes a beautiful wooden casket for them, Gen provides the flowers, and Chrome provides a headstone, in the traditional Ishigami style. They’re buried with a mix of Japanese traditions, and Ishigami’s own, deep in the graveyard. Senku and Taiju stay by her side at all times.

Yuzuriha later asks Gen if he wants something similar for his own family, but while Gen thanks her for the idea, he’d buried his brothers remains already, and doesn’t want to disturb him twice.

But Senku does notice he requests to visit the Kingdom of Might more, often taking freshly picked flowers with him.

As for him, he’s spoken with Taiju and Yuzuriha. He doesn’t want to burden the girl with his own pain, but while she’s still nowhere near recovered, she just holds his hand and smiles, thanking him for being there. Taiju kind of gets it, but Senku would rather he focused on Yuzuriha.

One night, when Gen is in the Kingdom of Might, and Taiju and Yuzuriha are fast asleep, Senku heads towards the graveyard, heading for the top of the hill.

The headstone is no longer there – the record being protected by Ruri – but Senku sits opposite of where is once would have been, and looks up at the sky.

Sometimes, he swears he can still see the space station twinkling. That’s ten billion percent impossible, but it makes him smile all the same.

“Hey old man,” he says. “It’s been a while. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”


End file.
